Space: The Final Frontier

Everyday after school as we're waiting for Laine to get out of class, I ask Johnny how his day was. There's usually one of two responses..."okay" or "good." I always ask him if anything exciting happened at school today and here again, he has a standard response..."no."

Today as he was getting in the car, I asked him how his day was, and he said, "Good." Then before I could ask him the next question, he said, "Actually it was awesome!"

I asked what was awesome about it, and he said they had science lab today. I thought, wow, they must have done a really cool experiment or something. "No, actually all we did was write on a paper."

"Well, what was so awesome then?"

Words poured out of his mouth...did you know the sun can't blow up? It can only keep expanding until it reaches it's limit, then it will collapse in on itself and become a dwarf. (insert digression about how dwarfs are awesome) First it will be a white dwarf then a black dwarf. But before the sun expands and completely burns up the inner four planets (Earth included) all the water will be evaporated off of Earth because it will get so hot. Then he told me not to worry because it's going to happen "way far" in the future.

And so on. And so on. And so on. He told me how anyone who hates scientists is stupid because scientists are the ones who are going to figure out how to colonize other planets and how to save us. He says he wants to be a scientist who studies space as well as be an explorer/adventurer. I asked if he wanted to be an astronaut, and he gives me his "duh, mom" look and asks me, "Don't you think it's a bit risky to be an astronaut?"

Hahahaha! Clearly his pre-teenage hormones haven't kicked in yet if he's evaluating the risk level of an occupation rationally. And clearly he views being an explorer/adventurer as a perfectly safe occupation.

He says space is his favorite area of science. Funny, that was mine when I was young, too. Except I WANTED to be an astronaut. I might have done it, too, if it weren't for discovering I needed glasses because one eye was (is) legally blind without corrective lenses. I followed shuttle launches and homecomings avidly...still do, truth be told. It never gets old to me. I jokingly say that when I was young, getting as far away from the insanity of my life on planet earth was what appealed to me. However, what really hooked me was the thought of being able to look at the earth from space and seeing it's beauty from afar. When I read what the astronauts said about the experience, I could easily envision myself having those experiences, too. I still can!

I'm reeling from all the spontaneous communication that took place today. Usually trying to get Johnny to engage in conversation about school can be tricky. It was so much fun to see him so animated and full of trivia!